| LED Digest 2483: Principles of Visual Communication |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. August 31, 2007 Issue no. 2483 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> --== Submitting Sites - How Often? ==-- ~ Terry Smith "...maximum frequency of submissions to Regional Search Engines and/or FFAs...?" --== Ecommerce Sites - PCI Compliance ==-- ~ Brian Butki "Unfortunately I am finding this old bait and switch tactic to be in wide use." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Do Photos Improve Credibility? ==-- ~ Peter D'Aprix "Sorry for the overly long dissertation, but this is a big topic seldom discussed here..." --== Recommended Web Awards? ==-- ~ Bill Rice "The WebAwards was started in 1997..." ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> It's been another great week on the LED. Thanks for the insightful and helpful discussions, everyone. For those in the USA (and elsewhere) taking Monday off, have a nice long weekend. I think we should do the same and take Monday off here as well. We'll be back on Tuesday for your regularly scheduled programming. Have a great weekend, Adam ---------------- From: Terry Smith Subject: How often should sites be submitted? I know submitting other than your main page to the major search engines more than monthly is not allowed & can get your listing removed. Does anyone have any information (or at least an opinion) on what the maximum frequency amount of submissions to Regional Search Engines and/or FFAs is allowed? Thanks, Terry Smith -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Brian Butki Subject: Hosting Ecommerce Software & PCI Compliance Fellow LED Heads... I need your help! It's time for me to step up from my third party eCommerce solution to hosting my own eCommerce Software, which requires that I become PCI Compliant. My existing hosting company assured me that they could do this. So I set up the software, database and SSL Cert. Then I performed an on-demand scan through Hacker Safe only to uncover several serious vulnerabilities. Tech Support explained that they have no intentions of making many of the necessary upgrades. Unfortunately I am finding this old bait and switch tactic to be in wide use. The more I shop around, the more I run into Sales Departments promising PCI Compliance while their Tech Departments come clean an admit they aren't equipped to pass such scans. Can any of you recommend a hosting company that has demonstrated the ability to pass daily PCI Compliance scans? My software requires PHP 4 or 5, is not Windows based, and is not GoDaddy. Brian Butki ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Credibility > The impression you make on the Web can be just > as polarizing as the impression you make in person. > Everything that goes into your Web site presentation > determines who will stay and who will leave your site > immediately. That includes the pictures you provide > of yourself. - Michael Martinez, LED Digest 2482 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1893/190/ I could not agree with Michael Martinez more. In all media, we human beings, and probably most animals as well, work first with "perception" which is entirely visual since our sense of smell is not that well developed. That, then, is the "sticky" part of the page that, hopefully, retains the viewer to look deeper into the piece, be it a web site, brochure, TV commercial or photograph. It is all perception first; in Detroit commercials that includes sound. That perception then can funnel the viewer into facts, sales, products, services and other media interaction with the viewer ONCE you have them hooked. The eye sees the "Gestault", which is defined in the Thorndike Burnhart dictionary as "'visual' psychology that emphasizes the fact that a whole may be something more than the sum of its parts, and that the parts of the whole are often modified by the relationships to it and to one another." In other words, the eye sees the collection of ALL the constituent parts of a page as a whole collection of the parts first, then drills down to those parts that attract the viewer. The way the parts are organized and thus interact can make a huge impact on the viewer either positively or negatively. One can enhance the other. Depending on what parts attracts the viewer based on their preferences, that is where they will go in order of their personal preference. But graphic design will also affect that visual flow making some elements more important than others on purpose. That is the purpose of graphic design; to first attract the viewer to the page, get them to stay there, then to guide the viewer to what the designer of the page wants the viewer to see first, then in descending order of importance. Most people will check out the photos and illustrations and headlines, skimming the page before zeroing in on the text. More true now than ever before. The bedrock principles of graphic design are the same for any visual medium. The methods in which they are applied vary according to the medium requirements. So exactly how you apply graphic design to a high end print medium with 400 dpi reproduction on fixed size glossy paper will certainly be different from the way it is applied to a web site with 72 dpi which will be displayed differently on almost every computer monitor. But the core principles will remain the same; visual communication. Most of us want to find something we can positively identify with and feel reassured by on a page. Thus the point about clothing. A message to a middle-aged Wall Street banker will probably be sure to turn off the banker by the sight of an unshaven person in grubby "Truckin' Momma" T-shirt, dirty and torn jeans with a greasy baseball cap turned the wrong way around delivering the message despite the fact that the person in real life could be a dot.com billionaire. That same dot.com billionaire could be perfect for a MySpace message. Everything we see, we make instant judgments about based on cultural conditioning, our own experience and training. We are all biased. So in determining both the content of a web page, or any page, it is crucial to know who your audience will be so you can create the smoothest and most efficient form of communication using images, graphics and correctly formed text that will be easy and familiar for your audience. So this brings us to the photograph. Should we or shouldn't we? Well that depends on your audience. What type of photograph and how it should be formed? That too depends on your audience. Personally, as a photographer, a photograph of employees stogily standing in front of some building is more likely to turn an audience off than turn them on. But these same individuals actually at work, whether counseling a client or doing a job of work, is far more effective. Tummies can be hidden by a desk, garish clothes by a workshop apron, tall can sit on the edge of a desk while short can stand on something out of sight. A good shot of the principles of the business either in conference or informally posed in an office, in front of their manufacturing area in hard hats or whatever communicates a bit more about their actual connection to the company and is worth far more than a portrait photographer's portrait which is usually stilted and boring. Use the opportunity to tell a story about the company, not just a mug shot of one or more employees. A photojournalist can be good for this kind of thing, but an annual report photographer is even better since they are trained to take the photo needed and how to light when necessary rather than just take a photo and use "flash on camera" the worst sort of lighting and least flattering known to man! They both know how to tell a story. A web site should be both imparting specific information as well as telling an overall story of the enterprise. The faster and easier you tell it, the more effective it will be. Every site will tell a story as will every photograph. It is whether the story told is the one you want told or not. We have all seen web sites promoting high tech products that do incredible things but if you visited the site itself and view the photographs, it looks like junk. If you have a high end, sophisticated product, the site and everything on it should shout high end, sophisticated. On the other hand, if you sell cut rate items for bargain prices, make a "newsprint" site that shows you are not wasting customers money on fancy, expensive web sites. So a site selling Rolls automobiles should be crafted with the same discrete high level design that goes into the manufacture of the cars themselves. And a site selling cut rate auto parts and accessories should be very basic and simple. That does not actually mean cheap for the latter since the site still has to function well, be easy to navigate and provide all the information required by the visitor as well as perform well for SEO. Which brings us to the type of topics mostly discussed on LED - the nuts and bolts of site creation and exposure. Without a well built site from coding to promotion, no one will ever get to see all the lovely things that have been built into the site by the site designers. Conceptualization, architecture, engineering and construction are equally important to developing a good site. Drop one and the site is less that it could be. So completing the circle to Carol Moore who unknowingly started a much larger discussion than she may have intended with a simple question [issue 2480 http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1891/190/ ], adding one or more photographs to her site is probably an excellent idea. But not just any photograph and not just plopped down anywhere. Her site is well designed and thought out for a basically text only site. So to add value to the site, rather than detract from it, the photo(s) should be well thought out both from the point of view of quality of photography as well as just what they should be to add to the visitor experience as well as their placement so as to improve the visual flow not jam it up. Their graphic designer and web builder (if more than one person) should carefully work the images into the existing pages. But adding even one different type of element like a photograph does change the dynamic of the page so the other elements may have to be altered as well to maintain visual integrity. One photograph on each page that illustrates what that page is about would add to the speed of content absorption that a visitor would go though in getting a quick understanding of what the page is about before they have to read a thing. If your people can find stock photographs that do the trick, they can save a lot of money. But many times photos have to be taken to custom specs for particular objectives. As for validity and credibility, as several other LEDers have pointed out, photos can easily be faked, so validity hard to establish. That is why I think validity should be focused on communicating with photographs to expand the validity of the company's purpose and the story of its purpose rather than try to prove you have a bricks and mortar facility and those warm bodies who occupy it. Those photos should be put on the About Us page and are quite valid in that context. The About Us should be a form of Facility Brochure that does establish validity of who you are, what you do and how you do it, what your background(s) is, your expertise, training, degrees etc. along with a physical address. In other words why visitors should trust you and hand over their cash to you. If there is no physical address and phone number, I never buy from that company as it has been pointed out, it could be a crook working out of a rented garage. Sorry for the overly long dissertation, but this is a big topic seldom discussed here in LED. Peter D'Aprix daprix.com ============ Sponsor Message =========== Now you got 'em, what are you gonna do with 'em? Surfers, that is. They're at your site, but is your copy ready? Is it powerful enough to convert casual visitors into free-spending customers? At http://www.GetWebContent.com/LED we first write "sell" copy that makes you money and your website sticky. Then we SEO it to make sure it gets read. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: William Rice Subject: Web Awards > In my very humble opinion, I believe that the Webby Award > is the only truly professionally recognized award out there > for web sites. Please let me know if there are others... - Lori Smart, LED Digest 2482 As someone who has worked with the Web Marketing Association for eleven years on their annual WebAward competition, I would have to disagree with you on the point above. While the Webby Awards are certainly a fine organization and each year generate millions of press clippings for themselves by giving out awards to people like Al Gore, Prince and this year's winners The Beasty Boys, they are certainly not the only award show in town. The WebAwards was started in 1997 and gives participants not only an opportunity to increase the winning site's visibility, but also receive valuable feedback from our expert judges. Each site is scored on seven criteria and the participants receive their scores as well as the industry average as a benchmark. Often, but not always, they will also receive comments directly from the judges who reviewed their site. This is not offered by any other award program we know of. Some award programs do not even bother to notify you if you did not win an award. Another thing that sets the WebAward program apart from other web site awards is its winner's page. Most awards want you to link to their homepage to boost their inbound links - like you said "linkback bait". We, on the other hand, create personal winner's pages with info and links to the winning site and can recognize the individual contributors to the project. This tends to benefit the participant more than it does us, but that is what we feel is important. We will be announcing the winners of the 2007 WebAwards on September 18th on our website www.WebAward.org. I recommend you take a look at the site, see the quality of winning Websites - and not just big names like eBay and Google. The WebAwards gives everyone an equal opportunity to be recognized. 47 of the Top 50 Interactive agencies participate in the WebAwards as well as major companies like IBM, HP, and Sony. We are very proud of our efforts as we are a volenteer organization that wants to give back to the online marketing community. We also sponsor an interactive advertising award program that will begin its 2008 Call for Entries in November. That Website is www.IACAward.org. Bill Rice President Web Marketing Association ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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